My eating disorder diaries: How a six-year battle changed my life

As I flip through the pages of my old journals, I convince myself the scribbly handwriting belongs to someone else. I think of myself as changed now. I’ve dealt with my eating disorder since middle school and I’m now in college. I’m just starting to feel better, but it’s difficult to see the same pain repeat itself in my notebooks.

On February 2, 2010 in a children’s hospital hooked up to an IV as a high school freshman, I wrote:

“I’m constantly fighting with myself. I argue with myself, rebutting and counteracting. No matter how much I fight the thoughts harmful to my recovery and push them back, those thoughts keep flooding my mind. It’s so hard having a conflict with yourself. There’s no way you can win.”

Six years later, in the middle of another eating disorder program March 27, 2016:

“As I try to figure out internal peace, the rain of self-criticism pounds my battlefield. How do I wonder about the inner war when the war of greater consequence exists outside of myself?”

There’s repetition of my thoughts, but also the repetition of meals. I was told to think of food as medicine. I wrote: “I never thought of food like medicine before. If I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t eat.”

The eating disorder had started with the consistent stomachaches during middle school. To stop them, I made rules for what I could and couldn’t eat. Food felt like the poison, not the cure.

I allowed myself less options, less eating and more weight loss. My stomach shrunk and I didn’t realize when I was hungry. Rules to limit stomachaches became laws carrying punishment. I avoided cake at birthday parties, even my own.

Losing weight was an accident, and I still don’t know why it became addicting, so automatic. At the hospital, I was terrified but I tried to be perfect at the whole recovery thing too. Confusion was natural, but extremely uncomfortable. I wanted to return to school, my friends, my “real” life.

I smiled for the doctors. I ate the meals. All I needed, I thought, was to get the hell out of there.

I wrote:

“I feel like those thoughts are weights building. I pick them up and chuck them away, but as the weights get heavier and I feel weak, I cannot lift them. So they crush me. I just wish the thoughts would fly away. I used to feel like I could fly so weightless from exercise and my food choices. I feel bogged down glued to the ground of this hospital.”

When food became medicine and I began to eat again, my health returned. I felt the withdrawal from my eating disorder and started to idolize the past. Freedom meant being able to exercise again and eat as little as I wanted.

It was all a hoax. Recovery is hard, especially at the beginning. The worst days of my eating disorder seemed like paradise. I blamed myself for what I called “selfish behavior”. I blamed my parents for bringing me to the hospital.

I turned 14 a couple of weeks before. I didn’t even understand what an eating disorder was until I was diagnosed with it. The first treatment was a bitter shock to me.

After a few months, I returned to school. I thought life would go back to normal, but instead I obsessed over my body and had panic attacks. I didn’t try eating disorder treatment again until college.

I admitted myself into treatment last semester. Although I didn’t want to eat the meals or discuss certain topics, I did it anyway.

Recovery takes time and pretending that a few months of treatment fixes everything doesn’t help. I kept, and keep, having the urge to construct a narrative from the fragments of my past. I want to sculpt my life into the arc of a strong story, but to do so would be deceitful.

When I used to have a rush of motivation to recover, I would read the stories of people who had eating disorders and got better. I yearned for my own life to fit the mold of theirs. It’s the classic all-or-nothing thinking – I wanted to be better quickly or not better at all.

When I was a senior in high school, I started a club called The Mirror Mission to raise awareness for eating disorders. Although I really did want to help others struggling with eating disorders, I realize now I was only pretending to be 100% recovered.

I’ve only admitted this recently, though I never stopped trying to spread hope and comfort to others dealing with eating disorders or other difficult circumstances.

Cubs for Coping is a nonprofit organization I started to provide handmade teddy bears for people in hospitals, homeless shelters and eating disorder treatment programs. We’ve donated over 500 handmade bears so far.

Visit our online fundraising campaign to join our mission and learn more about my story.